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Sourdough baguette... with a touch of yeast

August 13, 2008 - 9:21am

Janedo

Sourdough baguette... with a touch of yeast

I made Anis's baguettes and they came out rather nicely. I was very happy o finally get a good result. But, see, I don't really like yeast bread. Other than sweet doughs, I don't really see the point. So, right away, I decided to take the basic recipe and the techniques and see how a sourdough version would come out. I tried pure sourdough and maintain my dislike. The crumb is just too chewy for my taste. So, the next step was to try it with a touch of yeast. The result was perfect to my liking!

Now, unfortunately I'm having computer trouble. I can't open Gimp my program that I use to make my pictures small enough to post here. But I posted my results on my blog here:

They could have used a few more minutes baking and my pictures are light (they weren't that light in real life).

I used a firm starter because I really don't like the flavour of a white bread retarded all night in the fridge from a liquid starter. Too soury for my liking. The firm was great for my taste.

Here's the recipe:

500g T65 flour organic

375g water

125g firm starter (made the night before from around 30g starter, 90g flour and 40g water)

10g natural grey sea salt (it really is tastier!)

1/4 tsp yeast (could maybe have used less, but it worked)

A BIG thanks to Pat (Proth5) who introduced my to folding instead of kneading. I put all the ingredients in a bowl, mixed pretty well, then did 20 folds with the spatula turning 1/5th turn, so I went 3 times around the bowl (as Hamalman explains in his no-knead bread). Let the dough rest 30 min, 20 folds, 30 min 20 folds, 30 min., 20 folds, then after 1h30, in to the fridge for the night.

Next day, the dough is weighed and portioned while cold. Preformed, let to sit for one hour as it comes to room temps.

Oven turned on at 250°C. I wanted that stone HOT!!!! It makes a huge difference for baguettes.

Shaped the dough in to short baguettes, let rest a few minutes and then stretched them into the desired length (like the Acme baguettes). I made five out of this recipe.

Placed on to the couche, seam side up, let to sit covered 45-60 min.

My husband found me a nice collection of boards in the basement that I rubbed with flour and then sprinkled with flour and semoule. With a thin one I flipped the baguettes and then placed them on a larger one as a peel. I could slide on two at a time.

Poured hot water into the pan in the bottom of the oven, slid in the baguettes, got the others, slid them in and then steamed again.

Baked 25min but could have used a touch more. Anis made his apprentice put some back in the oven that I thought were baked well. Now I understand the problem. They can look baked on top because of the nigh heat, but aren't necessarily.

I think that's about it. Steve if you're around, I put a link to you kneading video because I also use that for my wet dough. It's great!!

I have sleep baby on my lap, so I hope I haven't forgotten anything, but wanted to post because time is so limited these days. It took me AGES to do the blog post! It's long and lots of pics.

Well, I have to say that Anis does not fall in to the category of a snobby French baker with secrets. He was made Meilleur ouvrier de France when he was only 24 and he is now 29. Young, full of ideas and ambition. He said he would only continue for another five years or so, after which he will hire a baker and just be the "consultant" because his days are so long. I think he is a rare species of a person and genuinely NICE.

So, it appears you used the same formula and simply added 125 gms of active starter.

I intend to try it this weekend. I hope I enjoy the result as much as you did. I note you divided the dough into 5 pieces.

I'm thinking of making some unformed pains rustiques from the dough. Calvel does this with baguette dough by just cutting squares of about 250 gms from the bulk fermented dough and proofing them without any forming, as seen on the CIA video. He says it is/was his favorite bread.

BTW, is the photo of the baguette crumb on your blog from your baguette, or Anis'? It is outstanding!

I am very proud to say that the crumb is mine! It was so exciting to cut them open and see that.

Yes, exactly. I wanted to keep the hydration level very high, so stayed with the 75%, using a firm starter. I pushed the starter to 125g, maybe 100g would have been enough. But when you look at the difference in quantity netween the two, it's minimal. When I do my light rye, I put 200g for 1 kg of flour. I don't really think it makes that much of a difference, except that if it's hot and everything is really active, it should go in the fridge faster.

As for the Calvel squares, that's interesting you should mention that because I have noticed that in bakeries here, sourdough bread is square, obviously just cut portions of dough. It looks very nice and rustic and thought I'd try it. I just started another batch, so I'll give it a shot because that would be WAY easier than shaping baguettes! What a mess I make in my kitchen each time. The dough is so hydrated, I have to flour everything thickly and it sort of gets everywhere because I'm a messy baker.

Jane, your baguettes came out beautifully! Thanks for bringing us Anis's recipe and method. Also, thanks for the link to the kneading video. I love the idea of sharing experiences between U.S. and French home bakers. I left a comment at ...Au Levain! I hope you and your readers don't mind that it is in English. Comments to my blog in French from French bakers are always welcome.

I agree that we can all learn a lot from each other. Your videos are great and I do the kneeding technique you showed very often. Silverton explains a one handed technique in her book but I don't like it as much. I don't need to talk on the phone at the same time. :-) I haven't used the Kenwood in weeks. So, I invested first in a bread machine (now in a cupboard), then used my Kenwood and now a beautiful bowl that I bought from the potter. Is that progression or regression?

Thanks for your com on my blog. I realize that for every hundred visits to a blog there is maybe one com. And it's always nice to have input.

Thanks Jane, these were fun to make and the taste is Great. The crust is very crunchy as you can see by the mess on my cutting board. I ended up with 4 but one was wisked off to my daughter's house as soon as it came out of the oven.

I used KA All purpose flour. My shashing is terrible but my husband couldn't care less. I really don't know how long your baguettes were or how high. The highest one went to my daughter and these are about 1 1/2" tall. I hope to make higher ones next time. How high and long are your breads? I let these rise on parchment before slashing and putting in oven, leaving them on the parchment. I baked them 25 min at 450ºF with some water sprayed in before closing oven. Next time I'm going to just cut the dough, stretch it out some and let rise. No shaping, we'll see what happens.

Anyway, the taste in really good and I'll make these again soon. I'm getting the starter going tonight. Thanks again. weavershouse

I let them rise in a couche. They hold their shape better, I find. And I slide them on the hot stone from a floured, wooden board. I think it helps with the rise because they get incredible oven spring. When I asked Anis why his baguettes didn't look risen, he said they don't need to because the high heat has such a strong reaction to the host of yeast in the dough. So, maybe you want to give it a try. It's messier than leaving it on the parchment, but sometimes, when the results are so conclusive, it's worth it! PLus, when you get the hang of it, you manage to control the flour a bit better.

My baguettes are about as long as from my elbow to my wrist. Some end up a touch longer and then end up a little crooked to make them stay on the stone. Width, well, they aren't three fingers wide, but more than two (before baking). How's that for very un-precise measuring?

I've made them again as bâtards and they were excellent. David mentioned the just cutting the dough and stretching and I'm sure that would work great, like the Nury's light rye. If you do, can you let us know how it went?

I let them rise in a couche too and then turned them onto the parchment and slid it into the oven. I will try it without the parchment tomorrow. For years I saw the French long shallow wooden boards at every antique show I went to. I kept saying I ought to buy a few of those but thought I'd never use them. They were everywhere and so cheap. Not any more.

Thanks for the measurements, that's just how I measure :o) I made mine about 14", next time I'll stretch less. I hope my next batch has a great oven spring like yours although we enjoyed them as they were. I don't think I could get 5 out of this dough like you did, why do you suppose that is. weavershouse

They were fun to make and I have a batch turning now to bake tomorrow. I hope for more oven spring. I do have to get a good knife for slashing. I made a mess out of these loaves. Tasted good though. Are you going to do these baguettes with sourdough? I'm sure yours would be super. I'm going to try the recipe you posted recently with a photo of those beauties you made.

The trouble with baguettes is they are so good fresh and a little warm with cold butter on them that two of us can eat a loaf pretty fast. They're such small loaves who's counting :0) weavershouse

I confess to having a batch with sourdough in the refrigerator myself. I want to try making pains rustiques or petits pains with this dough, but the baguettes were so good ... I might just make two batches over the weekend.

But then, there's the San Francisco Sourdough levain fermenting already and the rye sour elaborated for corn rye. At least tomorrow is predicted to be cooler ... a veritable cold snap down to 103F. (It's 108F at this moment. That's a bit over 42C, anyplace else.)

Oh, that's TOO hot for my liking. We haven't had terrible heat this year which is fine with me.

I tried cutting some dough and baking it up. It was a dough made with some T65 and some 5 grain flour. But it was rather hydrated, so the sides slipped. The result was very nice, but not like I saw in the bakery. Then it dawned on me that I had already concluded that their dough must have had a lower hydration level because the dough maintains it's shape and then crumb is not terrible open (almost not at all!)I found pics of it, so I'll post it in my blog somewhere and give you the link.

So, a high hydration dough is going to spread, but still look nice and a low hydration will keep the interesting rectangular shape with the cut edges. The San Fran sourdough is lower hydration, no. Maybe that would do the trick.

The bakery levain doesn't look nearly as nice as yours! The crumb is similar to the SF SD, but I'm after a higher hydration version. I would think that, even if it spreads after dividing, oven spring should yield good elevation, like the Nury rye or a ciabatta. We'll see.

I have my SF SD autolysing right now. I'm getting ready to mix the dough. I'll cold ferment it and bake tomorrow. I made some extra firm levain. I'm thinking about a pain au levain with walnuts. Maybe walnuts and dried currents.

42C is warm. At least I don't have to be out harvesting grapes in it! By 2100h, it was cool enough to take a walk. Low humidity is a blessing.

I'm still stubbornly working on a formula for all-natural-yeast baguettes. You know - as soon as I figure out how to control one aspect, I end up compromising on another. it's frustrating but I'm getting there slowly...!

If you develop a recipe that you think really works, let me know. I remain unconvinced. They LOOK great (the pure levain ones), my husband likes them, but I just don't like the bite. How can you that be changed?

I don't think I slept well last night, I kept thinking about what I wanted to do with this next batch of dough sitting in the fridge, Jane. How silly is that. Well, I decided to make a boule this time because one of our daughters is coming in from out of state this afternoon and I can use a boule for more things than the baguettes.

I took the dough out of the fridge, turned it out, preshaped, let it sit about 20 min. Shaped into boule and let rise in a brotform for about an hour. Then I baked it under a SS bowl 25 min. and uncovered till over 200ºF. Came out beautiful and it sat there singing for 5 min. I'll cut it later but I bet it's a winner. Maybe I'll take a picture later.

Oh, I'm so glad I'm not the ONLY one that sometimes can't fall asleep or even dream about bread and usually the one that is on the go. I dreamt about rye yesterday. But I was also disturbed because of a town party that was loud enough to hear the music.

Do show pics if you take some! I''m going to start another one very soon because my husband loves it.

Did you bake it at 250°C or a bit lower? I think it would be best to bake at 230°C maybe even droping to 210°C after a while since the bread is that much thicker.

Here's what came out of my oven this afternoon. The dough was made just as Jane made hers, including using Pat's stretch-and-fold-in-the-bowl technique.

The dough was a bit more slack than when I made these without the sourdough. It was extremely extensible and not very elastic. I don't really know if this was because of slightly higher hydration or because of the stretching and folding in the bowl rather than stretching and folding on the bench. The baguettes were harder to form and to score.

The pain rustique was made by dividing one third of the fermented dough in two parts, proofing them for one hour, stretching the pieces to 14 inches or so and baking for 20 minutes with steam for the first ten.

The pain rustique had a more open crumb than the baguettes. The flavor of both is really, really good - crunchy crust, tender crumb, mild but very definite sourdough tang.

Baguettes and Pain Rustique made from the same dough.Pain Rustique crumb

Looks good! I like the rustic baguettes very much and it must be so much easier to do.

Now, I don't know if it's a flour thing, but I always find my high hydration doughs very difficult to form and incise. From what I gather, the flour I use is about 11,5% protein and soft wheat. I've looked at vidoes, etc to see how to form baguettes and they always have this incredible dough that is easy to shape. So, reading your message made me realize that I'll always have trouble, but I'm getting used to dealing with it and because the resulting bread is so good, who cares about the lack of perfection in the appearance. For the baguettes, I try not to degaz them and I don't fold them tightly. I let the biggest bubbles pop. But since the last rise is short, I figure it isn't a good idea to degaz and let the holes form again. I want to keep the ones I've got. And I get good results by rolling to around half the final length, then stretching. I figure it should make the holes bigger!

If it is so hot over there, does that influence the rising times or do you have a cooler place? I find I tend to muss things up when the ambient tempertaure is too high. I find that sourdough, when it develops too fast, tends to modify everything. There seems to be a good temperature, but when over 25°C, yikes!

I used King Arthur French Style Flour, which is their T55 clone. I agree that there is a trade off with higher hydration doughs and that it's worth it for the better open crumb.

I'm thinking the higher ambient temperature may speed protease activity and break down the gluten, leading to less elasticity in the dough.

You mentioned that Anis showed you or told you how he forms his baguettes, but you didn't tell us. Now I'm curious. Did he use the traditional multiple folds then rolling, or did he do less shaping and stretch them?

Anis uses T65. He said he learned with T55 but finds the former gives much better results (especially in taste). Just thought I'd mention. Maybe a blend of bread flour and a good All-purpose would be a good thing to try. It's more economical, isn't it?

That's what I have found as well about high temperatures. Interesting!

He didn't actually show, he just told me that the shaping doesn't matter that much. He does it in a classic manner, but if you look at the baguettes in my inital blog entry, those are ready to go IN TO the oven. They didn't look risen at all! And when I asked him about that, he said it was the oven spring that was important. I don't think he does a very tight baguette that need to rise after, see what I mean? He doesn't do the stretch thing, as far as I know but then i can't say for sure!

King Arthur AP flour is about 14% protein, higher than most AP flour. I need to think about my next baguettes. My head is swimming with possibilities.

Do you know the protein content of T65 flour?

The thing is, I'm learning that the hydration level as a baker's percentage is meaningless without knowing what flour is used and how it absorbs water and how "strong" it is. From your experience, how much difference is there in dough feel between T55 and T65, with the same (baker's) percent water?

Hi David, I think you might have overstated the protein content of KA all purpose flour. From their website, KA all-purpose has an 11.7% protein content. Their bread flour has a protein content of 12.8%.

The protein content issue is also the reason I just ordered a bag of Heartland Mill organic all-purpose flour. I'm hoping that its slightly lower protein content (as compared to KA all-purpose) will better mimic French flour.

The T65 that I buy has 11,5% and the T55 11%. I rarely make bread with the T55 et technically it's for cakes, etc. There are absolutely no additives in my flour that could influence dough rising, baking, etc

I've done baguettes with T55 and didn't change the hydration, though.

As for the dough, it is very supple. When I form the baguettes, only the slightest pressure in rolling is needed for them to elongate. That is one reason I like the rolling, then stretching technique. I just have to pull every so slightly and they go to full length.

Maybe with this type of dough, the firm but gentle idea isn't applicable. Maybe just try gentle, since the idea isn't to roll a firm baguette. When I form them, I pat out a fairly small rectangle without patting out the bubbles, then I do the fold up and fold down, then press in the middle seam, but the sough is so slack, I have to fold again and pinch to close the seam. While I'm doing this, big bubble are forced out the seams. I burst the big ones and keep the manageable ones.

Now, that's what worked for ME! I don't claim to have answers. But it is a challenge working with such slack dough.

I am making another firm starter and will do up another batch this afternoon. I'll try to take good pictures or maybe even film, to see if the texture is visible.

Also, there is Pat's recipe that maybe with a touch of yeast, since it is based on American flour, would be interesting to try with a night in the fridge. I'm going to do that soon.

The baguettes and the pain rustique both look great. I like the taste the sourdough gives these. I'm going to try the stretch instead of forming next time. I used KA AP flour. Do you think the crumb in my baguettes is not open enough? I'd like to know what you're aiming for. Did you think at all about adding a little rye to these to see what would happen? Seeing as you have a long list of "TO DO'S" I thought I'd add another. weavershouse

I'm reasonably content with the crumb in the pains rustique and in the first baguettes I made with the Anis formula.

Your crumb looks good. My crumb in the last batch of baguettes was less open than yours. I attribute it to how I shaped this super extensible dough.

My starter has some rye and some whole wheat, so there was a bit of each in the baguettes. If I added more, I'd be back to something much like Nury's light rye. Not that that is a bad place to be!

I think I may try the sourdough-enhanced Anis baguettes with either a different flour (KAF AP?) or a slightly lower hydration. I'd like to achieve a dough that can be shaped in the traditional manner but still has an open crumb.

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